Juice Webster‘s new album ‘Kind of Fantasy’ is out today via Cohort Records, her first since 2023’s astonishing debut ‘JULIA’ (reviewed by me here). And it’s been well worth the wait.
The title track has all the hallmarks of Webster’s extraordinary songwriting abilities that deliver her ethereal voice. A pattering beat with swirls of sound in the ether introduce the track before Webster’s yearning vocals enter, infused with a sort of delicious melancholy and carried on delicate immersive melodies. Raw guitars intrude to temporarily lift you from the reverie before enticing you back into a fugue.The lyrics match the tone:
Opening track ‘Kissing’ starts with a crystalline acoustic guitars and a dappling sound that is soft and sweet. Webster’s incredible velvet vocals float across the top like a silken veil, a tender yearning in every note.
All along I’ve tried to be a kind of fantasy
Then I thought it was a waste to live inside your mind
Ever wondered what it takes to learn that everything’s alive?
I don’t want to be alone, I want to know what I want.
Webster says of the single:
‘Kind of Fantasy’ is about coming to terms with the realisation that I’ve spent a lot of my life observing myself from the outside, adjusting and tweaking parts of myself in an effort to present a certain way. I’d been noticing a lack of understanding around my own desires that was concerning me. Through writing this song, I started to get the sense that I was completely losing sight of myself at the mercy of trying to be something that isn’t actually real. Lyrically, I needed it to be very direct as a way of challenging the discomfort I feel around this admission. I wanted the instrumentation to feel tense, dark and powerful, and it took a while to get right
It’s a sonic delight that indicates Webster continues to blossom.
That tension between the dreamy and the raw runs right through the album. Producer and mixer Simon Lam gives Webster a wider canvas this time. The guitars have more grit, the shadows are deeper, and the record pushes further into alt-rock territory than ‘JULIA’ ever did. Where her debut shimmered, this one smoulders, and that velvet voice sounds all the more striking against the darker backdrop.
‘Care Yeah’ has a gentle reflective pace with Webster’s delicate delivery effecting and moving with another scaling chorus. Steel guitars delicately frames ‘Wind Me Up’ where Webster unveils her insecurities :
There’s a glimmer of you in everything that I do
Yeah, I’m sure of it, but that’s not the point of this
I’m a bull in a ring, wind me up and I’ll sing
I would die for you, not that you’d want me to
The personal theme is carried on in the still quietness of ‘Keep Warm’ with its rolling hypnotic guitars that dapple like sunlight on water.
‘Long Drive’ marks the turn into the album’s back half, a big-hearted indie anthem that pulses with the longing to break loose and be free. It leads straight into ‘Pretty Please’, where Webster bares her teeth. Fuzzy guitars and crashing percussion push hard against her smooth, observational vocals in a song that refuses to play nice: “So I gave you up, ’cause you wore me down, gonna blow it up.” She calls it:
A miscommunication diss track. It’s about frustration with people talking around the truth and sharing their opinions without knowing the full picture. It was really fun to write because I just leant into the kind of brattyness of it. I didn’t feel the need to overcomplicate it or intellectualise it at all which sometimes trips me up when I’m writing songs.
That freedom is audible, and it’s thrilling to hear her let rip.
‘Blue’ is raw and brittle with Webster’s dulcet tones to the fore over the acoustic guitars and the lyrics reflecting a deep insecurity:
I only come if I’m called, like a dog. I’m convinced that I’m free when I’m lonely.
Until the summer arrives, you exist to get by, there is warmth in the evenings.
I’m diving into the pool ‘cause at least it’s a blue that you see when I’m in it.
I draw a heart on my arm to protect me from harm then I put on some music.
The album closes on ‘Spite’, a fitting title for a record unafraid of the sharper emotions. It has a forward moving pace, dreamy, spacious and hypnotic: a beautiful farewell for a beautiful album.
Across nine songs, Webster moves easily between expansive indie moments, sweeping alt-rock ballads and quieter, more introspective passages, and she never loses the thread. What binds it all together is her candour. These are songs about love and hope and spite, about human failings and human potential, and about peeling back the layers we build to please others. She delivers them with a directness that is disarming, and that honesty gives the record real emotional weight.
Vinyl buyers get a welcome extra in ‘Hannah’, the 2024 single that marked her return (reviewed by me here). Its quiet contentment is a gentle coda to an album that otherwise isn’t afraid to bristle.
‘Kind of Fantasy’ is the sound of an artist growing into herself, unafraid to let the edges show. If ‘JULIA’ announced a remarkable talent, this confirms it. Webster has stopped trying to be a fantasy and has become something far more compelling: herself.
‘Kind of Fantasy’ is out today via Cohort Records and available through the link above and here.
Kind of Fantasy Tour, presented by Cohort and Crasher:
- 20 November: Junk Bar, Brisbane
- 21 November: Lord Gladstone, Sydney
- 22 November: La La La’s, Wollongong
- 28 November: Northcote Social, Melbourne
Feature Photograph: Joey Clough
